Posted on 03/15/2005 8:10:16 PM PST by nickcarraway
LONG before Shakespeare portrayed her as history’s most exotic femme fatale, Cleopatra was revered throughout the Arab world — for her brain.
Medieval Arab scholars never referred to the Egyptian queen’s appearance, and they made no mention of the dangerous sensuality which supposedly corrupted Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Instead they marvelled at her intellectual accomplishments: from alchemy and medicine to philosophy, mathematics and town planning, a new book has claimed.
Even Elizabeth Taylor, who famously played the title role in the 1963 epic Cleopatra, would have struggled to inject sex appeal into this queen. Arab writers depict Cleopatra’s court as a place of intellectual seminars and scholarship rather than the more traditional vision of kohl-rimmed eyes and hedonistic intrigue.
“They admired her scientific knowledge and her administrative ability,” the book’s author Okasha el-Daly, who is based at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London, said.
In Egyptology: The Missing Millennium he writes that “Arabic sources often refer to Cleopatra as ‘the virtuous scholar’ and cite scientific books written by her as the definitive works in their field”. She was also regarded as a great builder, he claims, responsible among other things for a canal to supply Alexandria with Nile water.
Cleopatra was born in 69BC, the last of the Greek Ptolemaic dynasty that ruled Egypt after Alexander the Great’s invasion in 332BC. The few images of her that survive suggest that she was not a great beauty by modern standards. Despite this she succeeded in seducing Caesar and his former ally Mark Antony, who left his Roman wife Octavia for her.
European scholars finally learned to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics in 1822 with the help of the Rosetta Stone. But Dr el-Daly believes that a ninth-century Arabian alchemist, Ibn Wahshiyah, got there first, opening up original Egyptian sources to medieval Arab writers.
“There has always been a snobbery which suggested that medieval Arab scholars only cared about science and engineering,” he said. “They wrote about everything they found interesting. I even found one medieval scholar who had written a book on sex.”
Kate Spence, a lecturer in Egyptology at Cambridge University’s Faculty of Oriental Studies, described Dr el-Daly’s work as very important.
“Everybody has known that these Arab sources were around for ages.” she said, “but most of us working in this field don’t know enough Arabic to use them properly.”
So Julius Caesar and Mark Antony were seduced by her for her mind? Yeah, I really believe that. Even 2,000 years ago, things weren't that different.
So, was she hot, or was she not?
This post makes her sound like a career power lawyer in a business suit.
Huh?
"Smart chicks are so hot!"
Hog wash. Limited, either-or thinking about women is characteristic of Arabic men and feminist women, and has no basis in the real world where beautiful, intelligent women are rising to the tops of corporations and governments.
Well, If you say so.
'Zackly. I don't know why Arabs are claiming her, as the pre-Islamic Egyptians were not Arabs.
She was the last Egyptian Pharoah, the scion of a high Greek house, and a thoroughly formidable woman by any account. I do not know if hagiography is in order here, but she certainly wasn't a stupid Hollywood bimbo.
And she wasn't Pre-Islamic Egyptian or black either.
One of the funniest things I ever saw was a call-in section on the Macon Telegraph editorial page, where someone said Cleopatra was African-American. So I called in, said how could Cleopatra be African-American when America hadn't been discovered yet? Cleopatra was from Egypt, so would that make her African-Egyptian? Wait a minute, Egypt is in Africa, so would that make her African-African?
Of course, they never published my comment.
I know a real African-American. Born in Rhodesia, now lives in Arizona. He's a white guy. 8~)
Under glass, no less!
Well who knows what her skin color was. The Macedonians had been in Egypt for 250 years by that time and there was bound to be some inter-marrying with the locals, so she wasn't pure Greek/Macedonian either.
Both Ceasar and Antony could have practically any woman they wanted, willing or not. I'm sure that didn't change after they had been 'seduced' by another politically powerful leader. Sure, Antony may have left his wife for Cleopatra, but is there any real doubt that he probably hit the brothels on a regular basis or had slaves around for that sort of thing? The emperor Augustus, certainly no ascetic when it came to sex, seduction and adultry, nonetheless hypocritcally chastised Antony about his licentiousness, which was well known. All this while Antony was floating down the Nile in his free time with the Ptolemic Queen. I'd say Cleopatra's real attraction was as that of Jacqueline Bouvier; attractive enough, but with a pedigree that allowed her to move through the stratosphere of high society, which was her natural environment. Cleopatra was just a ancient manifestation of that.
She may have bedazzled Julius Caesar with her brains,but Marc Antony was ONLY interested in sex...her intelligence wouldn't have factored into his lusting after her at all.
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